I was pretty excited to hear that Max and Igor Cavalera
were reuniting in 2008. Although Inflikted, their debut album as Cavalera
Conspiracy, perhaps wasn't their best joint effort and left me a little
underwhelmed, it was an okay album with a phenomenal title track.

Like its predecessor, Blunt Force Trauma starts off strong.
The opening track Warlord is a typical punch-in-the-face metal song
with some great riffing and Max is sounding as brutal as ever. The following
song, Torture, is a short burst of energy - not even two minutes. It
may not be the most creative song of all time but I find it somewhat
refreshing; many bands often do the complete opposite and fill their
albums with unnecessarily long songs, which might be one of the most
boring phenomena in metal today.

Lynch Mob, the third song of the album, features Agnostic
Front vocalist Roger Miret whose characteristic vocal style really lifts
the song. It's actually one of my favourite songs on the album - I can't
really explain why but they just nailed the small details with this
one. Unfortunately the album loses a lot of momentum afterwards. Killing
Inside, the first song to be released as a single from this album, has
a pretty cool part after the guitar solo but other than that it, along
with the following three or four songs, feel a lot like filler songs.

Things get better by the end of the album, luckily. Burn
Waco has some cool grindcore-influenced parts and a great guitar solo
wrapping the entire song up. I'm sort of confused with the song title
- is the song about burning a Texan city, and in that case, why? I don't
know, but it's a great song anyway. Rasputin is another okay song, but
doesn't really do much for me. The last song, moreover the title track
of the album, Blunt Force Trauma is one of the strongest songs on the
album and with the fading guitar harmonies at the end, I feel pretty
good about the album.

I like the different influences in the music - thrash
metal, grindcore, hardcore punk, heavy metal etcetera - but I still
get somewhat bored by some of the songs. I do however like that the
record is just a little more than half an hour long - it fits this kind
of music perfectly and makes some mistakes forgivable. Overall, Blunt
Force Trauma is a good follow-up album and it makes for some pretty
sick live performances this summer!